Sporting News’ Hall of Fame college basketball writer dives into five topics after declining the chance to cover Dennis Rodman’s next humanitarian mission to North Korea.

1. Duke is the underdog as the road team Saturday evening against No. 2 Syracuse. What must the Devils do to push their win streak to six?

Duke's Jabari Parker (AP Photo)

DeCourcy: The single most important decision when playing against Syracuse is which player to trust to station in the foul line area, behind the two backcourt defenders and ahead of the three baseline defenders. The player in that spot has to be intelligent and versatile. It helps to have ballhandling and shooting skill so that both sets of defenders must be preoccupied with what he might attempt.

When Pitt began its dominance against Syracuse in the early 2000s, the Panthers put wing Jaron Brown there. He was only 6-2, but he was tough enough to battle for offensive rebounds, a capable ballhandler who could attack in short bursts down the lane and an excellent passer who could make decisions on the move.

It doesn’t hurt if the player in that spot is an easy target, though. Indiana thought Cody Zeller would fit the role because he was easy to spot and an excellent face-up shooter, but Zeller was too easily flustered by collapsing defenses and it didn’t work for the Hoosiers.

Now, let’s see: Who does Duke have in its lineup that has good size and is a skilled ballhandler, shooter and passer? Anyone?

Yes, Jabari Parker becomes the Devils’ most important player in this one, as if he weren’t in every game. He’s got all the gifts one would want to put in that role, but it still will be new to him. He’ll have to execute.

It’s important for the team to make some of the 3-pointers that become available against the zone, but more so not to turn over the ball by getting lazy or daring with passes to the wing. Every outside pass against Syracuse should be safe. If it’s not, it’s quite possibly headed the other way for an SU dunk.

If you keep the Orange out of transition, they are not an elite offensive team. They’re very good, but the lack of a post scorer has an impact. If the Devils aren’t in front by a few buckets down the stretch, they’re likely going to have problems with point guard Tyler Ennis. He’ll find a way to get past Quinn Cook and make plays if it comes to that. Better not to allow him that chance.

2. On StubHub, you can get a Super Bowl upper-level ticket for $1,578 — but there are 12 different lower-level seats for Syracuse-Duke at the Carrier Dome that are going for more. In the immortal words of Vince Lombardi, “What the hell’s going on out here?”

DeCourcy: It is curious to see how the former royalty of the Big East are reacting to having the ACC’s upper-crust come to town. I honestly believe Pittsburgh made such a deal of Duke’s arrival that the Pitt players treated the game as if they were playing the Miami Heat—on the road. There was no competitive arrogance there, the kind that allowed them to go down to Maryland and punk the Terps just two days before.

Now the Syracuse fan base is doing the same. Look, I agree: Mike Krzyzewski is the best college basketball coach of all time, an opinion I hold even more strongly after reading through much of Seth Davis’s excellent biography “Wooden: The Life of a Coach.”

And this Duke team, though flawed, is dramatically better than its No. 17 ranking.

But the Devils still are No. 17.

Syracuse and Pitt have been playing at the highest levels of college basketball for decades. They’ve been playing regularly against the likes of Connecticut, Georgetown, Louisville and each other. But Duke comes to town, and they act like they just got invited to eat at the cool-kids lunch table. It’s almost sad.

3. Just for fun, let’s say Andrew Wiggins went to Kentucky instead of Kansas. What do both teams look like now?

DeCourcy: It certainly would make Kentucky better, because Wiggins is more talented than James Young, a better defensive player and more committed to his team. The ball would flow more naturally from his hands to Julius Randle’s, so Randle wouldn’t feel compelled to shoot it on nearly every touch because those touches would not be as rare.

There would be the issue of Young likely grabbing a big chunk of minutes at shooting guard, perhaps even starting, and there’s no telling how Andrew Harrison would respond to that. Then again, having his brother in the lineup hasn’t moved Andrew to playing a commanding style of point guard, so it’s not like there’s a lot of room for regression there.

Kansas still would have a monster at center and the deepest frontcourt in college basketball, but its perimeter game would be too raw. Wayne Selden has shown moments of brilliance, but also that he’s not quite ready to be the first perimeter option. Brannen Greene has made shots when he played, but he’s at least a year away from being a starting-quality Big 12 player.

So I suppose your exercise wouldn’t really be all that much fun for KU.

4. You surprised the NCAA reinstated Chris Walker, allowing him to repay the benefits he received, but did not offer former Kentucky big man Enes Kanter that chance?

DeCourcy: It does not surprise me the NCAA allowed Walker to play. It did not surprise me that Kanter was declined. The organization always has had a double-standard in regards to international athletes, including rules that were absurdly punitive until they were changed just a few years ago.

Essentially, whereas U.S. players could compete with professionals in sanctioned summer leagues and receive no penalty, those who played in overseas professional clubs were constantly at risk of “professionalizing” if they took the court as amateurs but competed with or against pros. European clubs that did not want to lose their best players to U.S. colleges because they preferred to sell their contracts to the NBA loved these rules, because it was easy to spoil a player’s NCAA eligibility by stashing one or two pros on the rosters of “B” teams or promoting elite prospects to play briefly with senior teams.

When the NCAA changed those rules just prior to Kanter’s recruitment, it seemed inevitable that the European clubs would do what they could to make it difficult for players such as him to leave easily for the U.S. and was only too happy to make him sound as “professional” as possible. The NCAA, of course, bought that argument and Kanter never played at UK. Walker had every reason to be aware that the actions the NCAA eventually investigated were against his rules, but he did them anyway. He missed a lot of time, but he’ll get to play.

Which is fine. The NCAA’s rules against agent representation are ridiculous. I believe a professional athlete is someone who plays in a professional league, and a college athlete is someone who plays for a college team. If Walker wants to play for Florida, he should have that chance.

Kanter should have, as well, but that egregious error can no longer be repaired.

5. In your 25-plus years of covering games, what’s the worst winter weather event you’re seen wreak havoc on a contest you were supposed to cover?

DeCourcy: Back in February 2003, I was supposed to fly to Memphis, drive down to Starkville for Mississippi State-Alabama, then drive back to Memphis for a Tigers-Cincinnati game. I got to Atlanta and found my connecting flight had been cancelled because of an ice storm in the Mid-South and I was stuck in ATL for a night.

It happened that Duke was playing at Georgia Tech that very evening. Instead of having to drive three-plus hours to Starkville, I drove 20 minutes to Georgia Tech and got to see Chris Bosh. So that actually turned out great.

A nightmare more along the lines of what you’re asking occurred in January 1996, when I was covering the Memphis Tigers for The Commercial Appeal. I traveled on the same schedule as the team, and they were booked for a neutral-court game against No. 1 UMass in Worcester. We were supposed to leave Memphis early in the morning the day before the game, but a terrible snowstorm was hitting the East and the flight was canceled. We were re-booked on a flight to Pittsburgh and marooned all afternoon at the airport there while trying to figure out how to get closer to Massachusetts.

Finally, it was decided everyone would fly to LaGuardia, then bus to Worcester. We landed in New York in mid-evening, and a long, tough bus ride got everyone to Massachusetts at about 12:30 a.m. The travel had consumed roughly 16 hours. It seemed like a difficult day at the time, but it beat sitting in a car on a highway for nearly two days.